Learning at Work Day is a great opportunity to re-energise the way your promote learning and development in your workplace. The Campaign for Learning's Juila Wright gives us her top tips– they also apply for special learning and development promotions all year round.
1. Create a theme
A strong theme for your Learning at Work Day can capture imaginations and give you a hook on which to hang all your communications, activity ideas and material designs. The Learning at Work Day theme for 2010 is ‘creating connections’ - but it’s important that you find a theme that works for you and makes sense in your own business.
2. Link your Day to business opportunities
One day of activities doesn’t mean that the impact should only last one day. What opportunities or challenges are there in your company that Learning at Work Day can address? Try to link the Day to longer-term strategies in business or departmental plans or new changes that support learning such as the new right to request time to train. This provides a focus for activities and helps to get management support for the Day.
3. Access all areas
Where possible, involve people from different business areas and from different levels in the company in planning for Learning at Work Day. Not only does this give you wider support for your activities, but also brings invaluable intelligence on what employees want and the best way to promote and deliver your activities.
4. Get creative with your promotion
Think beyond the normal channels of promotion. Make Learning at Work Day stand out from the constant bombardment of messages that employees get day in, day out. Use novel ways of catching people’s attention – stick post-it notes on the bathroom mirrors, or leave origami puzzles on staff desks and where they work that fold to reveal your message.
5. Make evaluation fun
The Learning at Work Day ethos promotes a relaxed, friendly and fun approach to learning. Try and build that into your evaluation too. One company calculated the number of employees that had visited a learning promotion stall by handing out chocolate bars and counting how many were left at the end of the day.
For more information visit www.learningatworkday.com
Juila Wright is the head of communications and marketing at The Campaign for Learning. For more information visit the website: campaignforlearning.org.uk
